Codex Supplement: Space Wolves detachments, ranked worst to best

Welcome to the halls of Fenris, fellow Space Wolves enthusiasts! The best Space Marine boys finally have their Warhammer 40K 10th Edition Codex supplement, alongside a stunning array of new models to build, paint, and play with on the tabletop.

To celebrate their arrival, we sat down in the great halls and perused the three detachments contained within this weighty tome. We've ranked them all from worst to best in terms of how competitively viable they'll be in-game, but also how fun and flavorful each one is for fans of the Sons of Fenris.

It's also impossible to look at these rules in isolation, so we'll be referencing some of the new Space Wolves models and datasheets to see which units live their best lives in which detachments.

There are three detachments in Codex Supplement: Space Wolves, and each one is named after a different heroic saga: Saga of the Hunter, Saga of the Bold, and Saga of the Beastslayer. Each offers a rule as standard, and an extra buff to that rule if you complete your saga, with each detachment serving up a different task for players to contend with.

If you want help bringing down larger prey, then the Saga of the Beastslayer is the detachment for you. All Adeptus Astartes units in your army gain the Lethal Hits ability when targeting an enemy character, monster, or vehicle unit, and if you kill half of your opponent's character, monster, or vehicle units, you'll get Lethal Hits against everything. It's a great damage buff that helps your anti-infantry profiles punch up into hard targets.

Actually completing your saga is academic here too, as you only really care about getting Lethal Hits against tough targets, and tough targets are almost always characters, monsters, or vehicles.

The enhancements are all decent, if not exceptional. Wolf-Touched lets a character join a unit of Wulfen, which will be great for attaching a Wolf Priest to Thunder Hammer Wulfen to create a mini tank-cracking missile unit. Elder's Guidance gives a unit of Blood Claws extra AP once per game — seems quite limited, but could be very useful on your go turn. Helm of the beastslayer is the opposite effect, reducing the AP of incoming attacks by one. This would be amazing on a unit of Wolf Guard Terminators, but they have no generic characters who can carry it, so it's relegated to just OK.

Rounding things out, the stratagems are… weird. The detachment has a ton of movement tricks, but none of the ones you need. Impetuosity gives a unit a reactive move after they've been shot, Thunderous Pursuit gives a regular reactive move when enemies come close, Coordinates Strike lets a unit jump back into strategic reserves, and Shock Cavalry lets Thunderwolves move through enemy units… all great, but where's my advance and charge? Or fall back and charge? These abilities are key to melee armies, and this detachment really feels their absence.

Despite having the best detachment rule of the three, I think, sadly, Saga of the Beastslayer is the weakest of the three. It has a lot of tricks, but it forgoes the ability to actually reach your opponent, which is the death knell of a melee army. It certainly still has some play, though, especially if you lean into units like Blood Claws, who have advance and charge natively.

They may be wolves, but this one might as well be called the dogpile detachment. Space Wolves units get +1 to hit if two or more units are in combat with an enemy unit, or if a single attacking unit contains more models than the enemy unit. So, outnumber your enemy and you hit better. What a bunch of bullies!

To complete the Saga of the Hunter and unlock the second half of your rule, you simply need to destroy a certain number of enemy units in melee combat, depending on the battle size. At 2,000pts, aka Strike Force, that magic number is 3 units. This is, to be frank, going to be hilariously easy to achieve for a melee-focused army most of the time, and the benefit is huge — + 1 to wound for Space Wolves units too.

This is an extremely powerful detachment rule that will help your wolfy boys smash even harder, and the restrictions on it are pretty easy to play around with. Outnumbering your opponent is easy, either by running a lot of MSU squads or just jamming a 20-man Blood Claw unit at someone.

To balance things out, the stratagems are on the tamer side, offering movement utility rather than even further damage buffs. Access to fall back, shoot, and charge is always greatly appreciated, and movement shenanigans like a 6-inch pile-in and consolidate, or the ability to move through enemy models, will help you to deliver your feral troops where they're needed, but there aren't any stratagems here that you're going to be spamming every turn. Still, movement wins games, and these tools are sure to come in handy.

Speaking of movement tools, the best of the four enhancements is undoubtedly Swift Hunter, which gives the bearer's unit the ability to make a scout move 7 inches up the board before the game begins — hugely powerful for an army that wants to hit you in melee. Beyond that, Fenrisian Grit offers a 4+ feel no pain save to the bearer, and importantly, it's not locked to Space Wolves specific models, which means you can jam it on a damage-halving Gravis Captain and hey presto, you've got a Temu C'tan. Of the other two enhancements, the Wolf Master is absolute pants, and you'll never bring it, and Feral Rage is a nice attack boost if you have points left over.

This detachment is all about the heroic characters of the Space Wolves. The detachment ability is called "heroes all," and it allows each of your character units to reroll a hit, wound, or damage roll per activation. Not bad for giving characters some reliability, but not a huge buff to their output overall.

You can fix that, though, by completing three boasts and unlocking the Saga of the Bold. You have four different boasts to choose from, and you need to complete three of them with Space Wolves character units (note that means specifically units from this supplement, not characters from Codex: Space Marines).

Killing your Oath of Moment target and holding a mid-field objective with a character unit are two gimmies, but you'll potentially struggle with that last one. Your remaining options are to kill a second Oath of Moment target with a unit that already killed one, or get a character unit into your opponent's deployment zone. Neither of these is an easy feat, as your opponent can screen you out of their deployment zone, and is likely to kill (or avoid) any character units that have already come out to kill their first oath target.

If you do manage to pull it off, though, you unlock a hit, wound, and damage reroll for all Adeptus Astartes units in your army (not just Space Wolves). That's a much spicier damage buff, but truthfully, you're unlikely to be activating this until turn 3, which means you're playing half the game with a very lackluster detachment rule.

Fortunately, the enhancements and stratagems are where this detachment shines. On the enhancements front, Braggart's Steel is a healthy damage boost, offering +2 strength AND +1 damage if your unit completes a boast, which should be very easy to trigger. Skjald gives you some command point generation, which is very welcome if you're not bringing Bjorn the Fellhanded along, and Thunderwolf's Fortune lets a character get back up after death on a 2+. That last one is very tasty on either a tanky Gravis Captain or, even better, a reactive-moving Phobos Lieutenant.

The stratagems offer some welcome damage buffs with options for lethal hits and reroll hits in combat, but it's the shenanigans that stand out here. Countercharge gives you the ability to charge your opponent in their turn, provided they're up within 6" of you. This makes stealing objectives from the wolves very difficult, as they'll jump out and eat you if you try it. You also get the hilariously named Alpha Strike, which gives you advance and charge… There is very little a melee army wants more than this in all of Warhammer 40K. Rounding all that out, you also get a -1 damage in the shooting phase stratagem that can protect your units from heavy firepower.

It's a tale (or should that be saga) of two halves with this one. The detachment rule is nice, but nothing special here, but those stratagems and enhancements are tasty, and they're strong enough to carry the detachment to the top of the rankings for me. Well… almost to the top.

Come on now, you knew this was coming!. The Space Wolves detachments are all decent, and they're certainly very flavorful. Still, like almost all of the other Space Marine supplements that came before it, the sad truth is that the Space Wolves will probably be at their most competitive when played with the strongest detachments from the base codex — namely the Gladius Strike Force and Stormlance Task Force.

The Gladius Strike Force still offers unparalleled flexibility, with a full turn of advance and charge, and a full turn of fall back and charge for your entire army, thanks to the Combat Doctrines detachment rule. On top of that, you get amazing stratagems like Honour The Chapter and Only in Death Does Duty End that allow your units to hit harder, and fight after death if they get hit first.

And the Stormlance Task Force is even better for the Sons of Fenris. Army-wide fall back and charge, and advance and charge for the whole game. What more could an aggressive combat army want? And unlike vanilla Space Marines, Space Wolves have the hard-hitting melee units needed to make the most of this ability.

Overall, Space Wolves look like they're going to be a force to be reckoned with in Warhammer 40k 10th Edition. They have some stunning models, some fantastic datasheets, and all three of their detachments offer some unique tricks… but for now, once again, the base detachments are probably going to reign supreme.

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